As providers, we are expected to have all this medical knowledge. We are trained on how to be open-minded and efficiently extract information in order to help patients the best way we can. Unfortunately, there’s also an expectation that we should keep our work and personal lives separate. As providers, we have to maintain a certain level of posture and strength. There is an expectation that when I walk into a patient room, I leave my personal thoughts and worries behind.  After all, we are there to learn and to take care of patients. Leaving all that baggage behind, for lack of a better word, became harder for me to do.

At one point last year, I was feeling so overwhelmed. The hospital wasn’t allowing any visitors, so there were many patients who were critically sick and had not seen any of their family members in weeks. I remember leaving my unit one day and seeing a patient standing at his window, looking down at some family that had snuck onto the hospital grounds to get just a glimpse of him. Seeing that was difficult; it reminded me of my grandmother, someone I admired a lot. One day, I got a call saying things did not look that great for her. Regardless of what time I had, I was not going to make it back to India to see her. This phone call was my time to talk with her before it was too late. What does someone say, if anything, in those last moments? As future physicians, we are not exempt from worrying about our own families and friends. I think there are a lot of patients who have gone through similar experiences. My grandmother’s passing helped me empathize with what some of these families may have felt. These moments have acted as bridge between the patients and myself. In the end, we both had similar worries regardless of what role or background we had.

In a way, the uncertainty of this pandemic has brought providers and patients together. It pushed me to rethink how I care for my patients and to bring back some humanity into their care, something that I felt I was losing.

-ani srivastava